Rawya Awad is worried about a new displacement in light of Israeli threats of a ground operation on Rafah (Al Jazeera)

Gaza -

“It is as if I am racing with the sun in its rising and setting,” Gaza citizen Rawya Awad described her daily routine, since she was forced to displace her family from her home in the town of Abasan Al Kabira, east of the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.

Since the outbreak of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip on October 7, this thirty-year-old Palestinian has experienced displacement several times, fleeing with her family from place to place, searching for lost safety in this small geographical spot.

In a small tent near the Palestinian-Egyptian border in the city of Rafah, Rawiya lives with her husband and their four children, and she asks in a tone that carries a lot of doubt and fear, “What comes after this tent? Where will we be displaced again?”

The life of Rawya Awad and her family was turned upside down by war and displacement (Al Jazeera)

Life coup

Rawya, who was working as a primary school teacher, told Al Jazeera Net, "Our lives have been turned upside down." She could not find a place to shelter her and her family in any of the hundreds of schools, which have turned into shelter centers crowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced people, who were forced by the war to abandon their homes.

It was a long and arduous journey of displacement for this family, who moved to several places within the city of Khan Yunis, before the occupation forces forced them, with intimidation and threats, accompanied by a massive ground invasion of the city and horrific crimes, to flee to the city of Rafah.

International estimates indicate that Rafah is currently crowded with about one and a half million people, including its original residents and those displaced there.

Rawya remembers her previous days and says, “I used to wake up early in the morning to prepare breakfast for my children and prepare them and myself to go to school. Where are our schools and our lives? I feel as if I am in a terrifying nightmare. This life is not like ours and we do not want it to continue. When will the world take action to stop this crime?” She said this as she looked around the small tent with its simple, modest contents.

Famine is ravaging the residents of Gaza as a result of strict Israeli restrictions on aid coming through the Rafah land crossing with Egypt (Al Jazeera)

This mother cannot sleep at night because she is worried about her children, and she wakes up terrified many times, due to non-stop Israeli air strikes close to her, targeting lands and homes adjacent to the border with Egypt.

Before sunrise, Rawya begins her daily journey to take care of her family, search for food and water, and try to find medicine for her two daughters, Juri (11 years old), who suffers from epilepsy, and Juman (12 years old), who suffers from “Jiva Syndrome,” and she struggles to provide it due to its scarcity and high price.

Because her husband suffers from poor eyesight and loses his simple job of repairing washing machines, Rawya bears the burdens of her family and provides for their needs, in light of a deteriorating living reality and the scarcity of humanitarian aid coming through the Rafah land crossing with Egypt, which is subject to severe Israeli control and restrictions.

International organizations estimate that this aid only meets 5% of the basic needs of about 2.2 million Gazans, more than 85% of whom were forced by the war to leave their homes and move to tents and shelter centers.

Juri (right) and her sister Juman suffer from diseases whose medicines are rare and expensive in Gaza (Al Jazeera)

Daily misery

Like the majority of displaced people, Rawya and her family survive daily on the few available canned foodstuffs, which she describes as having “no taste, color, or smell, and some of them have almost expired.” Sometimes, she gets a small amount of food from a “charity hospice” close to her tent.

In a childish manner, her daughter, Juri, said, “For a long time, we ate meat and chicken.” The price of meat has risen by about four times (one kilogram is sold for about $40) and it is not available in large quantities in the markets. Live chickens have completely disappeared due to the destruction of farms and the lack of fodder.

Rawya continued her speech, taking her daughter in her arms, “We need an intermediary in order to buy a frozen chicken for more than double its real price. A small chicken that is barely enough for two people is sold today for 60 shekels (about 15 dollars), so who can buy it?”

Displaced people in Rafah face extreme difficulty in accessing clean drinking water and other uses (Al Jazeera)

This displaced mother complains of the absence of official control over the markets, and a group of what she described as “war merchants” controls the prices, which are not suitable for the majority of people who left their homes and possessions, and fled with only the clothes that cover their bodies.

Throughout the five months of the war, employees working in the government run by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) did not receive their monthly salaries regularly, except for two financial payments. One story says, “I received 1,600 shekels ($421) in two payments, and I do not know how I spent it in light of the crazy prices.”

Rawya receives a monthly salary of 1,500 shekels (about $394), which she says was not enough, in addition to what her husband Yasser earns from his unstable job repairing washing machines, to manage her family’s affairs, including food, drink, and treatment. Yasser is one of the so-called "day workers", whose income depends on daily work, and they constitute the majority of workers in the sector, which mainly suffers from high rates of poverty and unemployment, which worsened with the outbreak of war and they lost their jobs.

Gazans prepare their own bread as a result of the occupation destroying most of the bakeries and forcing many of them to close due to the fuel and cooking gas crisis (Al Jazeera)

War routine

During the months of the war, Rawya learned skills that she was not accustomed to. She says, “Because of my work as a school teacher, I did not have time to prepare homemade bread, and I used to buy it ready-made from a nearby bakery. Today, I wake up early to knead the flour and prepare it in order to stand in a queue of women to bake it on a clay oven.” ".

The occupation forces destroyed the majority of bakeries in the Gaza Strip, while many of them closed their doors due to the crisis of running out of fuel and cooking gas. People queued for hours in front of two bakeries in the city of Rafah to obtain one loaf of bread, enough for a family of 5 people for one day.

Everything has changed in the life of Rwaya and her family. Even entering the bathroom is no longer easy, as there is no privacy in the small and dilapidated bathroom next to her tent, and throughout the war, she and her children did not have the opportunity to take a full shower with water and soap except a few times.

The tragedy of Rwaya's family will not stop with the near end of the war, as she hopes, as she will not have a home to return to, after an Israeli air strike turned it into a pile of rubble, but she says, "Let the series of blood stop, and it does not matter where we live, even if in a tent on top of the rubble."

Source: Al Jazeera